Provence and the Riviera: From Lyon to Nice
When to go
May, June and September. The lavender around Gordes flowers from late June into July, but in July and August the motorway south from Lyon is one of the most crowded roads in Europe, the Riviera is full and the car parks of the villages are too. In winter the coast is mild and quiet, and the mistral, the cold north wind of the Rhône valley, can blow for days.
The stops
Interactive map of the route on our site ›
- Lyon2 nights
The Romans founded Lugdunum on the hill of Fourvière in 43 before the common era, and its two theatres still stand there. In the old town the traboules, covered passages through the buildings, let the silk workers carry their cloth from street to street out of the rain; and in 1895 the Lumière brothers gave the cinema its start here.
- Viennestop on the way
In the middle of the town stands the Temple of Augustus and Livia, a Roman temple dedicated to the emperor and, after her death, to his wife as well; it survived whole because it was used as a church in the Middle Ages. Every summer since 1981 the Roman theatre on the hillside has held the Jazz à Vienne festival.
- Valenceone night
The town on the Rhône where the French say the south begins. In the old town the Maison des Têtes, a house of the early sixteenth century, has a façade covered with carved heads; and three generations of the Pic family won three Michelin stars for their restaurant here: André in 1934, Jacques in 1973 and Anne-Sophie in 2007.
- Orangestop on the way
The Roman theatre still has its stage wall, 103 metres long and 37 high, which Louis XIV called the finest wall in his kingdom. The opera festival held in it, the Chorégies d’Orange, began in 1869 and is the oldest festival in France.
- Avignon3 nights
From 1309 to 1377 the popes lived here instead of in Rome, and built the Palace of the Popes, the largest Gothic palace in the world. The bridge of the song, the Pont Saint-Bénézet, stops in the middle of the Rhône; the floods carried away most of its arches centuries ago.
- Pont du Gardstop on the way
A Roman aqueduct bridge of the first century, three tiers of arches almost fifty metres high over the river Gardon, built without mortar. It carried water some fifty kilometres to the city of Nîmes, and it is the highest aqueduct bridge the Romans left; a World Heritage site since 1985.
- Carpentrasstop on the way
While the Jews were expelled from the kingdom of France, the Comtat Venaissin around Carpentras belonged to the pope, and the Jews here, the Jews of the Pope, were allowed to stay in four communities: Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. The synagogue of Carpentras, founded in 1367 and rebuilt in the eighteenth century on the square of the town hall, is the oldest synagogue in France still in use.
- Gordesstop on the way
A village of pale stone stacked up a hill in the Luberon, crowned by its castle. A few kilometres away, in a valley of lavender, stands the Cistercian abbey of Sénanque, founded in 1148, where monks still live and work.
- Aix-en-Provencestop on the way
The Cours Mirabeau, laid out in the seventeenth century where the old walls had stood, runs under plane trees between fountains and the mansions of the old nobility. Paul Cézanne was born here in 1839, and painted the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the mountain east of the town, dozens of times.
- Marseille2 nights
Greeks from Phocaea in Asia Minor founded Massalia around 600 before the common era, which makes Marseille the oldest city in France. From the hill above the Old Port the basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde, crowned by a gilded statue of the Virgin, looks out over the city and the islands, among them the Château d’If of The Count of Monte Cristo.
- Cassisstop on the way
A fishing port between the Calanques, the white limestone inlets that became a national park in 2012, and Cap Canaille, a red cliff of nearly four hundred metres that is among the highest sea cliffs in Europe. The road above it, the Route des Crêtes, is closed on days of high wind and fire risk.
- Saint-Tropezone night
A fishing port until the painter Paul Signac sailed into it in 1892 and stayed, and other painters followed; their work hangs in the Musée de l’Annonciade on the harbour. In 1956 Roger Vadim filmed And God Created Woman here with Brigitte Bardot, and the village became famous.
- Cannesstop on the way
A fishing village until 1834, when Lord Brougham, a former Lord Chancellor of Britain, was stopped at the border of Nice by a cholera quarantine, stayed here and built a villa; the British followed. The film festival has been held here since 1946, and on Sainte-Marguerite, the island facing the bay, the Man in the Iron Mask was held in the fort.
- Nice3 nights
Nice belonged to the House of Savoy and became French only in 1860; Garibaldi was born here in 1807. The Promenade des Anglais along the bay is named for the English who wintered here from the eighteenth century, and since 2021 the city has been a World Heritage site as the winter resort of the Riviera.
- Èzestop on the way
A medieval village on a rock more than four hundred metres above the sea, with a garden of cacti among the ruins of its castle at the top. The steep path from the shore below is named after Friedrich Nietzsche, who walked it while he was working on Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
- Monacostop on the way
The second smallest country in the world, ruled by the Grimaldi family since a Grimaldi disguised as a monk took the fortress on the rock in 1297. The Casino of Monte Carlo opened in the 1860s, and the citizens of Monaco themselves are not allowed into its gaming rooms.
What it costs
Eighty dollars a night is the room. The car, the fuel and the péage are yours: the autoroutes from Lyon to Marseille and from Marseille to Nice are tolled, paid at booths by card, and over the whole route the tolls add up to several tens of euros. Parking in Lyon, Marseille, Nice and above all Monaco is expensive; use the underground car parks and leave the car there.
What to know
Three things. One: the péage. Take a ticket at the entrance and pay at the exit, or pay a fixed sum at a barrier on the open stretches; stay out of the lanes marked only with an orange t, which are for electronic tags. Two: Crit’Air. Lyon, Marseille and Nice have low-emission zones, the ZFE, where a car must show a Crit’Air sticker on the windscreen that states how clean its engine is. A French rental car normally has one; a car from abroad must order it in advance, and only from the official government site, certificat-air.gouv.fr — other sites sell it at a mark-up. The rules of each zone differ and have been changing, so check the city’s current rules before you drive in. Three: in towns, priorité à droite — at an unmarked junction the car coming from the right goes first — and speed cameras are everywhere, with a lower limit on the autoroute in rain.
Roads, tolls and rules
France drives on the right. The autoroutes are fast and well kept, with service areas every few dozen kilometres. Off them, the roads to the villages of the Luberon are narrow, and above Nice three corniche roads run along the cliffs to Monaco, one above the other; the middle one passes Èze. The driving days are kept short: the Rhône valley is split with a night in Valence, Provence is seen on day trips from Avignon, and the coast from Marseille to Nice is split with a night in Saint-Tropez. Rental cars are often manual; automatics must be booked ahead.
Travel Provence and the Riviera: From Lyon to Nice
The route on our site, with a room up to $80 every night.